Editor,
In 2011, hospital commissioner candidate Rob Born submitted a record request regarding the plans for the proposed new hospital wing. WGH provided the designs which Born reviewed for about an hour. He didn’t ask any questions, even though officials offered to clarify anything he might not understand. He refused, left and wrote an opinion piece where he trashed the plans and made a number of his own suggestions. Therefore, plans constructed by professional healthcare architects, developed to ensure the hospital complied with complex healthcare construction laws, were null and void in the mind of this “lawyer” who had neither healthcare nor architectural credentials.
This began a pattern of public record requests where he saw a scandal behind every hospital process. He came to a board meeting where he read into the record a number of allegations about individuals at WGH and further conveyed that if the state, or elected officials, did not agree with his accusations, then they were wrong as well. Are you starting to see a pattern here?
Next came his website, where the typical approach was:
1) Tell a made-up story loosely based on data he doesn’t have the mental acuity to interpret correctly. He makes wild accusations. It goes nowhere.
2) File a complaint with the state regarding those allegations.
3) State would investigate the complaint and find no wrongdoing.
4) Born then wrote additional entries to his website saying the state entity, or MQAC, or the Professional Org for Ortho Surgeons, depending on the complaint, is wrong. Once again, the delusional belief he is the only one who is right.
Born has lots of free speech rights, but very little else right. In short, a man with a grudge, a vivid imagination, and decent writing skills can endanger the health of an entire community. The intangible effects of his behavior are hard to quantify, but I can share some very tangible effects. Our community lost two very fine surgeons, Dr. Fru Bahiraei and Dr. Matthew Marquart, because they did not wish to practice in a community where a man with a poison pen could say anything he wanted about them and not be held accountable.
To my knowledge, Mr. Born has never served on any board of any corporate organization. He has never managed any healthcare organization. He voluntarily resigned from the Washington Bar Association and no longer practices law. His political strategy is to make the hospital management team and its board look as bad as possible so that he looks better by contrast. But this is a smokescreen to cover up his deficiencies. Mr. Born would be a floundering, inept leader, focused on the wrong things, urging implementation of the wrong strategies.
With the current challenges facing WGH, now is certainly no time for on-the- job training, and no time to elect someone as uniquely unqualified as Mr. Born. Mr. Born would be a disaster, just as Kelly Emerson was. Bitter, ignorant and arrogant do not a good public servant make. Vote Georgia Gardner for commissioner, a competent and dedicated public servant who wants WGH to succeed.
Trish Rose
Coupeville
